Friday, October 30, 2009

Events and Calendar in Salesforce - Advantages and Limitattions

I was playing around with the Events and Calendar functionality available in Salesforce and thought it would be worth sharing my understanding......... Here it is.......

Events:

Advantages
  • You can add multiple Participants to an Event.
  • The Participant could be a User, a Contact or a Lead.
  • You can send Invites to all participants.
  • You can associate any object with an Event.
  • Meeting Invites display the start and end time according to the User's Time Zone.
Limitations:
  • You cannot modify the meeting invite.
  • You cannot add a custom LOOK UP field to your Event (Setup --> Activity Custom Fields).
  • Meeting Invites display in the Time Zone of the Event creator for Participants who are Contacts (Obviously, they do not have a Time Zone).
Calendar:

Advantages:

  • You have multiple views of your calendar (Weekly,daily,multi-user view etc).
  • You can view event details straight from your calendar by just hovering over the date (Mini Page Layout's actually).

Limitations:

  • You are allowed to create elapsing events. Salesforce does not stop you from creating an Event for a User even if he is BUSY.
  • Calendar displays multiple Events side by side.
  • The Calendar can only be placed in the Home Page.
  • The Calendar is not customizable.